Dengue threatens to strike Dhaka off guard as the health ministry, health department and Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) are in apparent inaction to fight a repeat of the deadly outbreak that killed 193 people on record since 2000.

Dengue that breaks out in May and rages full-blown in the three months since is still a major threat to public health but has been ignored over the last two years.

Entomologists say the population of aedes mosquito, carrier of dengue virus, increases in rains. "The prevalence of den-

gue peaks at the beginning and at the end of the monsoon," a DCC entomologist said.

On any anti-dengue measures, a DCC health official said: "Let the time come. We will start work when monsoon arrives."

"We have plans as we work on it every year. When the time comes, we will review our previous work and go for action," said Nasimus Seraj, a DCC mosquito control officer.

A DCC official, who declined to be named, said there has been no expert in the corporation since 2002 to lay out plans to head off mosquito menace. The chief health officer was suspended last year and the health

officer was made an officer on special duty for what other officials said were political links to the previous government.

The DCC has no surveillance and runs short of adulticide and larvicide to spray in city wards. "Examining and purchasing chemicals take a lot of timea minimum of two months, but the DCC has not taken any decision yet, " he said.

Entomologist Manzur A Chowdhury says no institution now works on dengue because of non-cooperation from different government bodies and information on aedes population of this year is not available.

"Without data I cannot predict whether there will be dengue

outbreak this year. It was not serious last year, but that does not mean it will not make a comeback," he said.

The disease-control institute carried out small-scale surveys in some DCC wards in 2001 and 2002 in the wake of dengue outbreak. "No more survey has been done ever since," a source in the institute said.

Dengue turned epidemic in 2001 and 2002, but the ministry and DCC brushed aside the deadly disease as a minor problem.

About 12,000 people have been infected and hospitalised since 2000, the year dengue struck Bangladesh for the first time. According to the control

room at the health department, 136 people died of dengue in 2000, 36 in 2001 and 21 in 2002 in Dhaka. How many people were killed last year could not be known.

"As temperature is high this year, the city may see intermittent rain, which fuels the breeding of aedes, an entomologist said.

Ashraful Huq, a resident of Agargaon, said: "I have not seen anyone here from the DCC to work on mosquito control this season, although the month of dengue is closing in on us.”